Former DoE Employee Ensnared By Secret-Selling Sting Pleads Guilty (washingtonpost.com)

mdsolar writes: A former Energy Department employee accused of attempting to infiltrate the agency's computer system to steal nuclear secrets and sell them to a foreign government pleaded guilty Tuesday to a reduced charge of attempting to damage protected government computers in an email "spear-phishing attack." Charles Harvey Eccleston, a former employee at the department and at the independent Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), was arrested March 27 by Philippine authorities after an undercover FBI sting operation. Eccleston, 62, a U.S. citizen who had been living in the Philippines since 2011, was "terminated" from his job at the NRC in 2010, according to the Justice Department. In January 2015, the department said, he targeted more than 80 Energy Department employees in Washington at four national nuclear labs with emails containing what he thought were links to malicious websites that, if activated, could infect and damage computers.

Comments

Re:The making of a Terrorist

[Zontar The Mindless]

Reading comprehension fail.

The sting was launched after Eccleston offered to provide an unnamed foreign government with more than 5,000 email addresses of all Energy Department employees for $19,000, or else he would offer the information to China, Iran or Venezuela, according to court files.

After the unnamed foreign government reported the incident, the FBI sting operation sent undercover employees posing as the country’s representatives to meet with Eccleston in 2013.

Re:Espionage and Nuclear Weapons Proliferation

[stephanruby]

Most nuclear weapons proliferation occurs through espionage. Soviet Union, China, Israel, Pakistan all used spies to get started.

Most nuclear weapons proliferation occurs through defectors. The US, Soviet Union, China, Israel, Pakistan all used defectors to get started.